


Slow Match

by misslonelyhearts



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Age Difference, M/M, Original Character(s), Pirates, edward kenway - Freeform, young haytham
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-05
Updated: 2013-12-11
Packaged: 2018-01-03 12:32:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1070508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misslonelyhearts/pseuds/misslonelyhearts





	1. The French Leave

In addition to gaining the Sight and having been trained by swordsmen and spies, by the short end of his seventeenth year Haytham Kenway had developed a thirst for trinkets that would choke a magpie. To serve that need Haytham had over the preceding years, privately and with great pride, become a rather accomplished thief.    
  
In his eighth year he’d stolen a ribbon from his sister’s room.  Jenny had received it from his mother and wore it only once before it had disappeared into her growing collection of incentive baubles.  It had truly been his mother’s taste, a velveteen attempt at kindness.  Young Haytham had decided Jenny would not miss it, and much later, his hair grown long, he’d worn the ribbon himself without shame or too much misplaced sentimentality.    
  
In his eleventh year, Haytham had lifted Birch’s snuffbox directly from his outer pocket, spent days forcing himself to master the vile stuff, to control the maddening sneezes that had ensued, before finally chucking the contents into his chamberpot with disgust.  He’d then given the empty box as a gift to a visiting nobleman’s daughter while Birch looked on, reddening delightfully around the nose.  
  
In his fifteenth year, Haytham had used only his wit and a slim, silvery blade to cut purses in the park near Queen Anne’s Square.  He’d bumped and jostled, bowed and charmed.  After a week, he’d skimmed hundreds in heavy coin and had only been caught once, discovering then the surprising extent of bribery’s usefulness.  In the act of thievery Haytham had mastered a skill that countless lessers had been hanged for, and yet he never understood its purpose beyond the thrill.  
  
At seventeen, Haytham was taller than his father, both the pretender and the real, his shoulders were broad, and his jaw just beginning to jut solidly away from the roundness of youth.  They were bound for Europe, he and Birch, in pursuit of what Haytham suspected was either a lost cause or an elaborate lie.  With Templars the difference was painfully negligible.  And so he stowed his hope like a childhood treasure, acknowledging that in the rough business of a sea voyage, an opportunity for a measure of familial clarity had presented itself.  
  
The day before Birch’s hired carriage arrived to take them to Portsmouth to begin their search, Haytham broke into the servants’ quarters.  With ease, he stole several items of clothing from the wardrobe of their tallest footman.  He considered the theft less morally unsound, less humiliating, than paying the man outright for the genuine look of his off-duty poverty.  There was a carefully planned adventure at stake, after all. A  _mission_.    
  
And a proper disguise, as he’d been taught by serious men, was crucial to its success.  
  
Upon arrival at the boarding house, a temporary arrangement while they awaited their ship, Haytham promptly disappeared from under Birch’s nose.  Wearing his commoner’s look, no cravat and no hat, he struck out alone for Portsmouth’s well-muddied underbelly.  It took a single misstep into the wrong alley, no time at all really, to find himself disabused of more than one notion about the sort of man his father had been.    
  
About his other educated assumptions on the subject of pirates, however, Haytham was proven woefully correct.


	2. The Cut n Run

He chose the Bridge Tavern for its proximity to the waterfront.  It happened, also, to be within shouting distance of the Southsea castle, a squat and rounded military outpost bristling with red coats and long rifles.  Unable to disregard certain comforts, Haytham paid for the largest room at the end of the long upper hall, and the extra expense got him a pitcher, a rag and washbasin, a table and mirror, and a change of sheets.  His was the only ‘suite’ with a bolt on the door.  Immediately, Haytham stubbed his toe on the footboard of the shabby single bed.  It responded like the injured party, and the leg creaked once before giving out.  Standing before the rust-flecked mirror, he took a moment to rough-up his hair, rub candle soot into his cheeks, and yank a few holes into the seams of his jacket.  
  
He folded Jenny’s ribbon and tucked it into his pocket.  
  
Birch and the George Hotel, in which he undoubtedly fumed that very moment, drifted further to the back of Haytham’s mind as he slipped between Portsmouth’s navy men and haulers, squashing himself between enormous crates of fruit and their interested dealers.  Noise and reek assaulted him from every corner and body. Ships loomed and bobbed their rigging.  Locating a quiet spot near the dry dock where an enormous galleon sat sunning its bones, Haytham settled in to observe.    
  
These were stooped men and women all, even the heartiest of them.  It would be to his advantage to appear as if he’d had none his whole life.  So Haytham hunched himself to pretend a deprivation he’d never known and for some hours, until the sun set, he seemed to have the hang of it: The gait, the squinting look, the exchange of foul-mouthed courtesy.  By the time he shuffled into the alley between a sausage-maker and a rundown church, Haytham had learned just enough get himself into trouble.  Trouble was half the point of it all.  
  
The alley wasn’t blind, but everything past the sick-yellow fall of the streetlamps became nothing but shadow with a blue-black promise of more muddy alleys beyond.  He’d cut a few purses, palmed a pair of earrings, and felt light as a flag in the wind as he went for his breast pocket to check the day’s haul.  But before he could gloat, before the Sight had even a chance to fail him, a firm hand clamped on the back of his head, shoving hard.  The stone wall of the church reached out to smash his nose and the alley swooped sideways. Blood wet his lip, running from the shattering pain in his face.  His legs hit something like steel and he went down like a counterweight, quiet and stunned.    
  
“Slumming, is it?” said a voice like stirred coals above him.  He felt a knee jam into the middle of his back, and hands in his pockets. The day’s earnings went in a flash, and Haytham coughed blood instead of growling his frustration as he’d meant to.  The man clucked in pity.  “Poor dab.  Don’t feel bad. I had you made from the door o’ the Bridge.”  
  
Haytham squirmed and braced his arms on the ground, but the knee in his back dug deeper.  The weight behind it turned threatening.  
  
“Get up and it’ll be the last you do.”  
  
Then, the pressure was gone.  He heard almost nothing of the retreating footsteps.  The thief was quick and soundless, but Haytham caught a glimpse as he rounded the end of the alley.  The man was long-haired, stocky and broad as a barn, wearing what appeared to be a filthy captain’s dress coat, with rigid leather where the epaulets had once been.  A length of ragged red silk wound around his waist.  But it was the boots Haytham saw best from his vantage point, still writhing on the ground.    
  
The man wore neither hose, nor buckled shoes.  Instead, his leather breeches were tucked down into high-cuffed boots.  
  
Robbed by a pirate.  Haytham sat up on his knees and spat blood, hands curled limply on his shaking legs.  
  
A pirate he’d wanted and that’s what he’d gotten, like always.  If the man had leapt off the cover of a ha’penny novel Haytham would have been less surprised.  And perhaps less injured.  Slowly, he gathered his feet under him and stood up.  
  
He sulked all the way back to the Bridge, bumping irritatedly into every shoulder, forgetting to affect every nuance he’d learned. Portsmouth had swung first, and Haytham hadn’t been quick enough to duck.  Back in his room, standing at the mirror again to swab at his swollen nose, he cataloged his error.  
  
Despite the lacquer of blood, the blush of a bruise, he was clean in every way these people would never be, down to the root of himself.  Washing was anathema, it seemed, but so too was any shine that couldn’t be stolen. He smiled at his reflection; less handsome than the day before, to be sure, but far more knowledgable.  
  
The following morning, Haytham searched and found his pirate lazing in the shade of the dry-dock galleon with a few equally shady gentleman.  His long hair, a dirty wheat color, had been pulled mostly back, and Haytham noted at least two glints of gold at his ears.  Not a fine face, but the eyes were charming enough.  It was early, but the lot of them drank to drown men twice as big.  Haytham stuck himself where he couldn’t be seen and waited, patience coming easy since his nose throbbed at every step.  After a time, when the burly thief and his friends passed by, Haytham fell in behind them.    
  
It took less than five minutes to steal back his purse, plus a little extra.  The world, to Haytham, retained a modicum of sense after that.    
  
He followed the pirate at a careful distance, under the swinging signs of low businesses at the port. Darting to the refuge of tall stacks, Haytham marveled that the man seemed too drunk to notice that his hip was light.  Employing talents made for grander work than this, he happily followed, watched and waited.  The pirate wandered near the Southsea tower, and in their separate ways he and Haytham marked how the soldiers came and went.  The pirate never once caught the eye of any guard.  And that’s when Haytham began to suspect that his mark was more dangerous than useful.  But he was in for a penny already.  
  
When tailing him dragged on past teatime, and the streets thinned out as people tucked themselves away, Haytham decided on a more direct approach.  Apparently hungry, the pirate angled for a stall near St. Mary’s street, some red-faced fellow selling pasties full of God only knew what.  Haytham moved in.  He crowded up behind the shorter man just as he went for his purse.  
  
“Buy your luncheon, sir?” Haytham said, heart hammering.  He reached around to dangle the stolen pouch and drop it squarely on the counter in front of the pirate. The purveyor lifted an eyebrow at the jangle of coins but, reading something in the face Haytham couldn’t yet see, he went back to stacking his pasties.  
  
The pirate went very still, his back a bulging menace across the front of Haytham’s chest.  Then he laughed, a belting racket that reminded Haytham of carriage horses on cobblestones.  The pirate slapped the counter, making the purse jump, and turned to face Haytham.  
  
“Hiya!  That’s a tidy bit of work,” he said, revealing a chipped tooth in his wide grin.  “What’s the sense in givin it back?  What’s the angle?”  
  
“No angle,” said Haytham. Despite the man’s jovial response, he took a small step backward.  “A clean job deserves admiration. One professional to another.”  
  
“Admiration,” the pirate repeated with a nod, leaning on the stall counter so that his bulk made the whole thing shift.    
  
Haytham looked down to find the pirate had pulled back the edge of his coat, revealing a pistol and a dagger tucked into his sash.  He gave Haytham a profound appraisal, one that had him ready to turn and bolt, finally settling on the muddy purple bruise somewhere around Haytham’s left eye.  But at the end of his examination, the pirate laughed again and clapped Haytham’s shoulder hard enough to loosen teeth.  

“No great loss and no harm,” he said, but his big hand lingered to grip Haytham’s elbow.  With the other he jiggled the purse. “Weren’t nothing but fiddler’s money, anyhow.”    
  
The pirate scooped out a couple of coins and pushed them over for a pie.  He walked away with it and ate it in two bites, two strides of his great legs, licking his fingers noisily as Haytham joined him.  They could have been friends in a promenade, except for the stink of harbor water and rotting fruit.  The pirate re-tied his purse and cut a sideways look at Haytham.  “That said, you’re no professional.”  
  
“I suppose not,” said Haytham, clasping his hands behind him before thinking better of the posture.  “I’m sure there’s a word for what I am, but it escapes me at pres-”  
  
The pirate cleared his rubble-rough throat.  
  
“Bron.  Call me Bron, lad.”  
  
He stopped to offer his hand.  It was, Haytham thought, likely the same meaty paw that had smashed his foolish brains against the church wall.  
  
“Jack,” replied Haytham, and shook it without pause, gripping him nearly at the elbow.  
  
Bron nodded, smiling up into Haytham’s face.  And did he. . .wink?  
  
“As are we all,” he said.  “But you’re a chesty one to be back-thieving from the likes of me.”  
  
Chesty?  Haytham nodded.  The Kenway in him had never been so apparent.  
  
“It’s that obvious? That I am no mere. . .conveyancer,” he said.  
  
A pair of modest ladies walked between them in a hurry, allowing Haytham to admire Bron’s admiring.  Bron scratched his chin, watching the stiff wiggle of dresses as they moved away.  
  
“Aye, once you opened your mouth.  And it’s plain to see that you’ve altered the property some,” Bron said, leaning in conspiratorially.  He flapped at Haytham’s loose hair and his frayed collar.  “A beau-nasty if ever I saw one.”  
  
“Yes, I seem to have underestimated Portsmouth’s grimness,” Haytham replied. He spared a glance down at his costume, his shoes, and thought of the alley. Though there was now blood on his shirt he was still painfully clean.  “Or overestimated my talents.”  
  
“Bah! Credit where it’s due, Jack, I wouldn’t knock about with a light-timber,” Bron said.  He patted Haytham's arm. “Your talents are fine fine.”    
  
That seemed to be his last word, and took off without another one, leaving Haytham to stand slackjawed in the street.  A portly man with an apron and a mustache nearly sideswiped him with a handcart full of netting.  Haytham watched Bron’s broad back as he walked off, the swaying tails of the captain’s coat, feeling utterly and prematurely dismissed;  Still dangling on the hook, as it were.  Haytham ran a hand through his hair and cast about at the dockside bustle.  As he was about to regroup, rethink his entire bloody plan, an ear-piercing whistle cut across the street.  
  
Bron crooked a finger at him.

“Come foul a plate with me at the pub!” he barked. When Haytham trotted across the street Bron threw an arm around his shoulder.  “I’ve had enough ship’s biscuits to last me all winter, be a delight to share a meal and a bottle of kill-devil wi’ you.”  
  
“Lead the way.” Haytham possessed and unnatural talent for hiding his eagerness.  He was grateful for it now.  Bron spat lengthily in the rutted street.  
  
“It’s off to the Blue Posts, is it.”  
.  
  
They sat in pleasant silence together with the tavern humming and pints thunking all around them.  Rum, food, ale, and more rum went back and forth across the table in that order, punctuated by an approving grunt from Bron when the bread was good or the potatoes firm.  Haytham ate very little.   
  
“I’ve heard that accent before,” Haytham offered when Bron’s plate was cleaned for a third time.  
  
“Know many cutthroats from Bridgend do you?”   
  
Not West Country, then.  And not Swansea.  Haytham shook his head.  
  
Bron drank like a castaway.  His throat seemed to be fashioned for it.  Ale foam clung and dripped with vulgar slowness along his brassy stubble.  He dragged a thumb and forefinger around his mouth to wipe it away, and Haytham found himself transfixed, his lower back going stiff as a French court sword despite the rather immediate onset of drunkenness.  
  
“So, how’d you get up to the mark? Young princeling such as you,” asked Bron.   
  
Haytham leaned back in his chair, knees splayed.  
  
“Is there a school better than that found in the street?”  
  
Bron lifted both eyebrows and poured another half glass for Haytham.  
  
“Alrigh’, don’t tell me,” he said grumpily.  
  
“I would but I’m tapped out for lies.”  Haytham shrugged.  He licked his lips and worked his tongue into the cut just inside.  
  
“Then I wish you many a stout and bloody shit,” replied Bron and lifted his own glass in toast.  They drank, each with an eye on the other.  
  
The tavern filled up, raising the heat and the odor of working men, and Haytham passed an hour of drunken fabrication telling Bron about the life ‘Jack’ had known in Londontown.  Bron responded with indirect tales of life on the sea.  Whatever adventure, whatever the tussle, he was careful not to implicate himself as more than an unlucky observer.  He was a captain and that would always be truest about him, he said.  Haytham watched him slide his coat buttons free and pull the open neck of his shirt aside to reveal a tattoo, half hidden in chest hair.  
  
The lines were softened by age and sun, but the image was plain: A crest bearing an anchor, a flag and a sword.  And the word ‘Deathless.’  Haytham wanted to touch it. He supposed that much was evident to Bron, who gave him a wolfish smile.  A little more liquor and he could return it.  A Kenway knew his strengths.  A templar knew them, too.  
  
Haytham stood and silently ordered his feet to take him to the bar without incident.  He procured another bottle of rum, even managed to pay, but the transaction fell apart when he knocked a nearby pint clean off its center.  The ale made a tremendous splash across the length of the bar, wetting the arms of at least three patrons leaning there.  
  
Haytham watched it with blurry awe, gaze settling on one stubby and very perturbed barkeep.  Two of the doused roughnecks, a man and a woman in privateer garb, turned to Haytham with murder in their identical blue eyes.  
  
They were a matched set, obvious siblings if not twins, and big as houses.  Both were black-haired and clear-eyed and Haytham guessed the woman to be even taller than her brother.  She certainly bore a great many more scars.  Her sword was bigger, too.  
  
“You’ll pay for it, you lout,” said the woman.  She turned in her stool and put a great, booted foot on the floor, swiping at her shirtsleeves.  
  
“Be still, Edie,” said the barkeep, and refilled her tankard.  
  
Irish then. Haytham nodded.  
  
“Take a page from your betters, lass, and have another,” said Haytham with a smile and a salute to the little man behind the bar. He pushed the pint toward her elbow.  
  
“Shut yer gob, fuckwit,” she replied, and then patted the crotch of her breeches lewdly. “Or use it for a purpose.”  
  
“Not even with _his_  mouth would I dare,” Haytham said, and gestured to her brother.  With that, he picked up his rum and turned for the table.   
  
“Oi! Thas my first mate yer insulting,” she shouted at his back.    
  
Bron, still seated, mumbled into his tankard, “Fair sure it were aimed at you, love.”  
  
Haytham swung around to see her brother, or first mate, set down his pint and stand up with a scowl. Together, the twins advanced on Haytham, backing him into the table.    
  
“My deepest apologies to you both,” Haytham said, slurring loudly and sitting down hard.  The room jogged a fraction in his vision. Some patrons went quiet.  He put a hand over his heart and took a steadying breath.  “What I meant to say was, ‘Be fucked.’”   
  
Before stars erupted behind his eyes, Haytham saw Bron wince.  And for that peripheral moment, that brief look, he was so blazingly familiar that Haytham managed to smile just a second before the blows came.   
  
Two blinding jabs, one to the temple and one in the ribs, sent Haytham to meet the tavern floor intimately with his face. The room boomed with laughter and bar-banging fists.  He felt them through the floor.  Under the table, Haytham watched Bron crouch down to look at him. He gave Haytham a merchant’s calm expression. Would he bargain? What was his walking price?  
  
“It’s early yet,” said Bron.  To Haytham it seemed he fairly twinkled with love of violence.  He drank his ale, free hand flexing and then fisting for Haytham’s viewing, and whispered, “Let’s have a belter if we’re gonna.”  
  
 _Perfect._     
  
Haytham laughed, bloody spittle bubbling in the corner of his mouth while the twins loomed above him, sharing a bit of confusion.  His chest ached for a deep breath he was unable to take. The brother spat a stream of warm, tobacco-tinged ale down into his face. Bron finished his pint in one gulp.  
  
Everything was startlingly perfect, and to Haytham’s further surprise everything, it seemed, was permitted.  And he was still holding the bottle.  
  
He kicked twice with the full, mechanical grace of his training, and destroyed the woman’s left knee before making jelly of her brother’s testicles.  They roared in unison like circus lions.  
  
Once Haytham rolled himself under and clear of the table, Bron flung it on end, smashing the brother’s toes with its solid edge.  He bellowed again, still clutching his groin.  But the sister was on Haytham like a bird of prey, flying over the furniture with a hand on her rapier’s hilt.  As she came down he backstepped, graceful as countering a Fabris thrust, and swung the bottle. It caught her right on the crown.  Rum and glass sprayed down around her shoulders.  Bron stuck a boot in her side and shoved her over into a crowd of shocked patrons.  
  
“Rip the fuckers from stem to stern, lads!” The brother stood on the other side of the upended table, his saber drawn.  A half dozen unsure thugs gathered at his back.  
  
“Six grog rations to the man who guts them,” said the sister, scraping wet hair and blood out of her face. The crowd pushed her upright, but otherwise no one moved.  
  
Haytham swayed on his feet and gave the broken bottleneck a quick look.   There were the hidden blades, of course, but. . .he tried the Sight and nearly vomited from the assaulting red that burned behind his eyes.   _Be fucked, indeed_. Bron’s hand crept toward his pistol.   
  
“Too late for a settler, chums?” Bron addressed the tavern.  
  
Haytham saw the sister, Edie, draw her sword, saw the thickness of bodies between himself and the door, the persistent red of enemy threat that would be with him here and forever.  No matter the location, death held court.  He held the warrant.  
  
Setting the bottleneck on the floor, oh so slowly, Haytham held his hands in plain view, stepped up onto the closest empty chair, and cleared his throat.  Bron gazed up at him as if he’s suddenly become an ostrich.  Haytham put his left hand behind his back and with the right he gripped his coat lapel as he'd seen barristers do a hundred times.  
  
“I’m afraid there shall be no rations of any kind.”  
  
All eyes, red-rimmed and furious, turned to Haytham.  
  
“Be advised, all present who count themselves among the crew of the ship called  _Elizabeth_ ,” Haytham began.  A murmur shuddered through the tavern, and the twins looked at each other.  “On this day the ship and all property therein have been seized by the port authority and are forfeit to the crown.”  
  
“He’s a lyin sack o-” the brother started to shout, but Haytham continued over him.  
  
“For the crimes of piracy, unsanctioned privateering, and distribution of stolen goods the captain and her first mate have been charged and found guilty.  Why then, you may ask, do the criminals stand here, free of irons?  Why can they be found here, drinking their ill-gotten earnings instead of awaiting the hangman’s noose in Southsea?”  
  
A heavy rumble, the sort of foul-weather warning sailors knew well enough, spread through the tavern, and more than a few men who’d kept their seats now stood with their hands weapon-ready.  But instead of at Haytham, they turned their mistrustful eyes on the black-haired twins.  
  
“Do tell,” said Bron, voice rasping.  Haytham nodded, giving his best and most pompous self a good stretch.  He managed not to slur too badly, even.

“By order of the court, in exchange for their cooperation, that is to say  _extensive_  testimony of the sort that undoubtedly includes a list of names as long as my. . .well, the captain and the first mate have received immunity from the penalty of death.  That is to say. . .” Haytham turned slowly eyeballing any and all pirates who’d followed him bumbling and stumbling down this rabbit hole. “They’re free as birds for sending you lot up the ladder to bed.”  
  
Bron made a choking sound, but kept his deadpan look.  The whole of the tavern, from the boards to the roofbeams erupted with full-throated shouting.  As a befuddled mass, the pirates and dockers and plain old drunks shoved at Edie and her brother, inciting a few colorful threats traded between loyal crew and unbelievers that rippled like pondwater across the room.  
  
“It’s nothin but foul wind from a tight arse,” said Edie, her deep voice struggling under the rising storm in the tavern. She took two steps toward Haytham and found herself yanked backward by a pair of ruddy dockers still in their wool caps.    
  
“Take yer ruttin hands off her!” The brother swung his bul,k and his saber, toward the scuffle that had ensued between his sister and the longshoremen, and was swiftly restrained by several thugs who’d stood with him at first.  
  
“Hold em down and make em talk!” yelled one man.  
  
“I’ll not be buggered over again, Edie!” shouted another from the bar.  He brandished a bully club with more notches than a chopping block.  
  
“Bloody ignorant pirates!” Edie screamed and stomped on one docker’s foot before sending her elbow into the other’s gut. She bared her teeth.  “He’s a liar!  And soon to be a dustman.”  
  
More shouts.  Haytham stood still, nose tilted upward.  
  
“Am I?” Haytham spread his hands, inspecting his cuticles.  As he talked, he stepped down off his impromptu podium and sauntered toward the tavern door, a fox creeping among wolves.  “Interested parties are certainly welcome to check the Elizabeth.  You’ll find it rather more  _red_ than when you left it.”  
  
He gestured out to the street, sending Bron a quick look, but the pirate was already on the move and snaking toward the door, unseen by the mob.  No one cared about anything but Haytham.  
  
“To the docks!”  
  
“Tie down the cap’n first.  Jimmy too!”  
  
“Try and you’ll lose your cock and both eyes,” Edie said.    
  
She and Jimmy managed to settle themselves back to back, swords threatening anyone who so much as twitched.  And while the ruckus in the tavern seemed to have swayed briefly against them, Haytham had undervalued her wit.  She leveled him with a cold stare from across the crowd.    
  
“Ye know so much.  Tell us then. . .what class is our _Elizabeth_?”  
  
Haytham’s smugness slipped a little, his cheek flinched.  _Bloodyfuck_. . .Brig? Schooner? Certainly it hadn’t been a man o’ war.  If he hadn’t been so thoroughly drunk he might have been able to utilize the memory he was trained for, praised for.  That he’d remembered the blighted ship at all, or that he’d noticed Edie’s tattoo while he was laid-out on the floor, gave him such hollow pride now.  
  
“Like many a vessel fallen to the same fate,” he said with a mock-sad smile, “she’s naught but scrap now.”  
  
Fists thumped dangerously on the posts and the bar, and more thunderous seething boiled up from the crowd.  Haytham sketched a quick look to locate Bron, and found him miraculously at his back, with a hand caressing the tavern door like it was the Blessed Virgin.  
  
“That’s no answer,” said Edie, standing full upright.  She pointed her rapier at Haytham, a general at the head of an unruly army. “And you’re out of rope, you little dasher.”  
  
The door suddenly squealed, breaking the humid quiet, and banged the outer wall.  Cool air flowed over his neck and Haytham felt Bron’s hand pulling him through the open doorway.  He watched, pinwheeling backward, as a whole tavern of sweating, drunken, cursing men, led by the black-haired twins, surged toward the too-small portal after them like a tide of malevolent intent.  
  
Bron hurled him down Squeeze Gut Alley, veering and steering the blurry Haytham around the walking traffic toward Prospect Row.  Chancing a look, his Sight gone slewy from probable concussion and rum combined, Haytham saw the gargantuan twins eating up the pavement fifty paces back.  And a rowdy pack of animals in coats and boots followed.  Haytham groaned.  Apart from the selection of rusty cutlery, some of them had rather large sticks.    
  
Bron, still holding fast to Haytham’s lapel, threw him into the recessed doorway of a white-washed clapboard building.  The etching on the glass read ‘Lancaster House.'  Haytham winced as Bron’s fist pounded the door frame hard enough to rattle every window.  
  
A pair of stone faced bounders in fancy dress appeared behind the glass; Angels with hamhock arms barring admittance at the gate.

“Open up, Miss Connie!”  Bron yelled, fogging the glass.    
  
Haytham looked back again.  Their certain doom had closed the gap by twenty yards, clubs clacking and voices promising injuries too explicit to be simple hyperbole. Bystanders in the street jumped aside for their lives.  Haytham turned, gulping the fish-foul air, and joined the futile attempt to beat down the door.  Bron hurriedly pulled a scrap of paper from somewhere inside his coat and slapped it against the glass.  Haytham couldn’t see what was written on it.  
  
“Connie! If you’ve an ounce of pity, loyalty, or wont of gold,” Bron said, pressing the paper harder against the glass, “for the love of fuck, open up!”


End file.
